Category: Rabbits

Wednesday, March 11, 2026 The Workshop: Albrecht Durer

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For those of you just catching up, I’ve decided to spend a season imitating some of the masters of painting as a way to practice sketching and painting. I had a dream that I’d started with Albrecht Durer’s painting “Young Hare,” which made it a good place to start.

Albrecht Durer was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1471 and died in 1528 at the age of 56. He gained an early reputation for his high quality woodcuts, and learned goldsmithing and drawing from his father. “Young Hare” was painted in watercolor and gouache in 1502. Another well-known painting by Durer is “Praying Hands.” In his later years, Durer was sympathetic to the teachings of Martin Luther. He wrote, “And God help me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther; thus I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties.”

I shared last week my initial sketch and unfinished painting. This is how it turned out.

And here’s just my version:

I was particularly happy with the signature, which I also dreamed about. No one is going to mistake mine for the original (for one thing, my hare looks like it’s been on meager rations compared to Durer’s fat little buffer), but I was quite pleased with the way it turned out anyway.

Next week, I’ll be tackling this painting of George Washington by the American School:

Gulp. What was I thinking? This might be a short-lived experiment.

I’ll probably get rid of this hare-brained post in the morning.

Wednesday, March 4, 2026 The Workshop: Boat and Bunny

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Greetings, my good and faithful readers. Sometimes I wonder why you stick with me; I often dole out very meager fare. But here you are, once again, making your way through another of my meandering blog posts. If there was a medal that I could give out to you, I would.

Let’s meander over to the workshop now. I wanted to paint a lake scene with a canoe in it for my husband for his birthday. Secondly (which I can say, even though I neglected to say “firstly”), I wanted to paint from a photo, rather than copying someone else’s watercolor painting. I went to the internet and called for aid, and the internet answered. Thank you, Mr. Internet. And of course, ultimately, thanks be to God for making this beautiful world in which we find lakes, forests, mountains and red canoes.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on the first painting from my Great Idea of last week: Albrecht Durer’s rabbit. The Great Idea

I’ve learned from watching the portrait show how important the first sketch is for settling the outline and getting the right proportions. I still need practice doing that, obviously, but I’m not one to start all over. Press on and all that.

As I said, in progress! Hopefully it will be done by next week.

Forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward what lies ahead, I will delete this in the morning.

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 The Workshop: Dutch Doings and the Great Idea

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Ye olde paintbrush has not seen a lot of action since my surgery, but I did dust it off a couple times to work on something for a dear friend of Dutch heritage.

As usual, I went on Pinterest and scrounged around for ideas, building up a little file of possibilities. The main thing for me is that it has be something I might be able to replicate, which eliminates many choices.

I found a simple blue tile with a clog in the middle. How hard can it be?

Sigh. Harder than I thought. Here’s the original if you want to know why I was unhappy with it:

Slighted daunted, I went back to the file and picked out a simple windmill to do instead, to which I added a Bible verse that this friend had sent to me recently.

That’s all that’s been happening in my watercolor workshop of late, although I have another unfinished painting in the works.

A couple days ago I had a Great Idea! My life is littered with the carcasses of Great Ideas, so I’m not sure how far this will go, but here it is: I decided to embark upon a study of imitating paintings of the masters from over the centuries! I don’t expect mine to be any good, but it seemed like it might be good practice for drawing and painting.

Here’s the funny part. No sooner did I have the idea when I dreamed about it that very night. In my dream, I decided to start with a painting of a rabbit by Albrecht Durer.

First of all, kudos to my brain for dredging that up out of my subconscious. Second of all, even in my dream I started wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew. I made an attempt, but don’t remember much about what it looked like. Somehow (again, kudos to my brain) I remembered that he had a unique way of doing his signature using just his initials, so I spent some time in the dream trying to figure out how I could imitate that with my own initials. Ha ha! Sometimes I crack myself up with the dreams I have.

So stay tuned! Maybe I’ll start with AD’s rabbit since it was foretold in a dream.

I’ll probably dream about deleting this in the morning.

Monday, June 9, 2025 Mr. & Mrs. Mallard plus a Rabbit named Willow

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We have a largish fountain in the front yard and a smallish one in the back (an embarrassment of fountain riches). For the first time in 20 years of living here, our tiny little ponds have attracted a pair of mallards.

Is it just me, or is her beak longer than his? Lately, the mister has been showing up by himself, which makes me wonder if his lady love is nesting nearby. Will they bring their darling ducklings to our pond? Is that a good thing? They’re fun to watch, but it’s not all glistening green necks and plump feathery bodies on orange legs and feet. They’re also leaving their ducky calling cards on the edge of our front fountain. What if their new habitat catches on and we have a veritable mallard tourism site in the years to come?

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’ve developed quite the relationship with a rabbit doe who likes our perennial garden. I call her “Willow.” You ask how I know she’s a she? I was privy to a very public courtship between Willow and an ardent admirer of hers. Although she rebuffed his advances, he kept chasing her around the garden. When he’s not around, she comes surprisingly close to me, perhaps it’s because I’ve honed my sedentary skills to an art and I seem more like an unmoving part of the garden landscape. As much as we’ve hit it off, I have strongly discouraged her attempts to build a nest in the garden by putting our scare owl in the hole she started to dig. Sorry, Willow. I like you but I can’t have you ruining our garden.

Willow eats our dandelions, which endears her to me.

I’ll probably use a scare owl to ruin this post in the morning.